Mbeki, 'Africa's troubleshooter'
2005-01-28 08:39
Pretoria - With his steady and determined approach to breaking deadlocks in demand across the continent, President Thabo Mbeki is emerging as Africa's main trouble-shooter.
While he has yet to claim success in Ivory Coast, Mbeki has showed staying power, taking charge of talks with opposition and rebel leaders this week in Pretoria that stretched into unscheduled third and fourth days.
Mbeki cleared his diary to accommodate the men from the troubled west African state, scrapping a visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo and delaying his departure to the World Economic Forum in Davos.
"He takes his mediation efforts very seriously and is determined to see these talks through to their logical conclusion," said his spokesperson Bheki Khumalo.
Actions speak louder than words
Mbeki's actions speak for themselves: three visits to Ivory Coast since he was called upon by the African Union in November to help broker a solution to the crisis stemming from the a 2002 mutiny against President Laurent Gbagbo in the former French colony.
He is sending a South African police contingent to Sudan's troubled Darfur region, helping the African Union engage in diplomacy beyond the continent, in Haiti, and pushing Morocco to resolve the decades-old dispute in the Western Sahara by recognising the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
The crisis in Ivory Coast, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo are expected to be discussed at the Abuja summit of AU leaders on Sunday and Monday, with Mbeki sure to be a key speaker on those issues.
Mbeki has put South African diplomacy in overdrive just as the United Nations Security Council, the big powers' club, is thinking of making room at its table for an African country.
"South Africa is able to make a strong case for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, if Africa were to get a seat, just on the basis of Mbeki's mediation efforts," says Garth le Pere, executive director of the Johannesburg-based Institute for Global Dialogue.
Out of the ordinary
"These peace initiatives, bilateral and multilateral, are the cornerstone of Mbeki's Africa policy. They have raised the profile of South Africa in a manner that would not ordinarily have happened," he says.
Mbeki's patient, determined style has been honed in similar efforts in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Backed by heavy regional and international arm-twisting in both cases, the South African mediation managed to get the belligerents to sign comprehensive peace deals, setting the stage for elections and a new democratic era.
In both cases, getting these accords implemented is proving problematic.
Burundians are pressing hard to get changes to the interim constitution before it is tested in a referendum next month that will pave the way for elections in March.
With lawmakers in the DR Congo dragging their heels on vital enabling measures, not even the most optimistic observers believe the DRC will meet its June deadline for elections.
The complexity of these issues has denied Mbeki the domestic political kudos of a major foreign policy triumph and Ivory Coast is hardly shaping up any better.
Mbeki's mediation efforts have attracted more praise abroad - particularly in Africa - than at home.
The independent South African media has focused more on Mbeki's "soft" approach to increasingly lawless neighbouring Zimbabwe, criticising the president's refusal to confront President Robert Mugabe as a form of appeasement.
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